Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,54

pulling Piper with me as I sidled toward the coffee table to grab one of the candles.

I always called it “my” gun, but technically it belonged to my dad. He’d taught me to shoot, and he’d made sure I memorized the combination to the gun safe in case there was an emergency and he and his service weapon weren’t around. I wasn’t an expert marksman, but I wasn’t a public menace, either.

I hauled Piper up the stairs while Bob continued to bark and snarl. Dad’s gun safe was in his study. “Hold this,” I ordered Piper, thrusting the candle at her as I knelt before the safe.

She held the candle low so that I could see the numbers on the combination lock. My hands were shaking a bit with nerves as I turned the dials. Bob’s barking had moved to the kitchen now, which I supposed meant whatever was out there was continuing its survey of our defenses.

As the safe clicked open, I noticed that I had subconsciously started thinking of our stalker as “whatever” instead of “whoever or whatever.” Maybe it really was a person out there, messing with us just for fun. But after encountering a fanged baby, a trash monster, and a living pothole, I found my assumptions shifting.

Dad’s SIG Sauer was loaded and ready to go, because he didn’t have it there for sport. It was meant for emergencies, and in an emergency you don’t want to have to stop to load your gun before facing the enemy. I checked it over briefly and made sure there was one in the chamber.

“You look like you know how to use that thing,” Piper said, sounding surprised for some reason.

I looked over my shoulder at her. “I’m the police commissioner’s daughter. It would be pretty lame if I didn’t know how to shoot a gun.”

From the sound of it, Bob was back at the front door. Pressing myself against the wall, I tried to peek out the study window, which looked out over the front door of the house, but all I could see was a sea of black. It was so inky black out there that I figured the whole city must be out, because lights anywhere nearby should have provided at least a tiny hint of ambient glow.

Bob’s frenzy was slightly muffled by distance, which allowed Piper and me both to hear a strange click-click-click sound. It was coming from outside, and to my ears it resembled the sound of claws on metal. It was coming from below, climbing higher.

“Shit!” I yelped, pointing my gun toward the window—which was the only possible way anything could get in this room—while moving backward away from it. “It’s climbing the drainpipe!”

Thanks to the candle Piper still held, I could see nothing in the glass except a faint orange glow being reflected back at us, but my ears followed the sound as it rose, and I was tempted to fire blindly in that direction.

Not so tempted that I would actually do it, though. A gunshot would shatter the window, and if it didn’t hit our stalker, then I’d be giving it free access to the study.

Bob had finally realized his prey had moved, and I heard the thump of his paws as he bounded up the stairs. He blew past Piper, then threw himself at the window. I half expected the thing to shatter on impact, but it didn’t. His claws scrabbled at the glass—our house was going to be a wreck by the time this was all over—and he continued his furious barking.

I was torn between wanting to get as far away from that window as possible and wanting to be there and ready if whatever was out there broke through. I stood hesitating near the door, gun still held in a classic two-handed grip and pointed at the window. My finger wasn’t on the trigger, though, because Bob kept leaping into my line of fire.

“We should go to a room with no windows,” Piper suggested, tugging on my arm.

PSA: never tug on the arm of someone who has both hands on a gun. I was lucky my finger wasn’t on the trigger, or I might have fired by accident.

“Careful!” I snapped at Piper, glancing at her in my peripheral vision and nodding toward the gun.

“Oops, sorry.”

Whatever was climbing the drainpipe should have made it to the window by now, but if it was making any attempt to get in, I couldn’t hear it over Bob. His desperate barking